Samuel_Tow

Like... Swift! O noes!

Seriously, there are ways out of everything, and arguments can be made about how much Stone Armour SHOULD have to get out of, but it doesn't make sense for Teleport to cost as much as it does because it helps Stone Armour avoid a lot of its drawbacks.

Consequences for actions are cool and all, but consequences for INACTION are a terrible, horrible idea. One of the cool things about this game is that you don't HAVE to do anything. You can streethunt, you can do missions, you can work on costumes or you can just sit under the Atlas Statue and watch who passes by. I have a friend who likes to do a lot of just that. So if I had, say, a hunt in a zone that, via player inaction, had become a Hazard Zone and had spawn sizes far too big for me to handle alone, whereas I could have handled what the zone had otherwise, I'm not going to find myself thinking "Oh, cool, this is so interactive!" but rather "Well this sucks. I guess I'll have to drop that mission."

Yet again, never design events, systems or mechanics based on the belief that people will show up and participate. They won't. Most definitely do not design such with consequences for people not showing up. When people don't show up and then suffer consequences, they will be pissed off for having their game be ruined by circumstances beyond their control. Absolutely, positively never design anything that requires players at large to log in, participate and maintain a status quo or risk massive deterioration of play conditions. Even the people who keep showing up will eventually get bored and things WILL go to hell. No-one likes playing upkeep and maintenance.

Gameplay comes first and foremost in absolutely every aspect of the game, because it it sucks to play, nothing else really matters.

Look, I'm going to keep saying this no matter how you spin it - I do NOT want to engage in PvP. I want to be exposed to PvP. I don't want the share the same zone as PvP. I don't care where, how and why it happens as long as it's off in some place where I don't have to run across it unless I specifically choose to go where it's happening. No "PvP off flag, no amount of fairness, NOTHING is going to make me agree to this.

It's high time you understood this - no matter how you try to sell it, a certain percentage of the people are simply going to keep saying no. We do not want PvP in PvE zones. Period.

Not to mention the technical difficulties...

Take that how you will, but there are NO situations where "u" is appropriate. And don't play the "English is not my first language" card. English is not MY first language, either, but you don't see me resorting to leet speek.

In a very big way, these are words of truth. This is a public forum. Anything posted here is going to face responses from other people, both good or bad. Anyone making a suggestion should be aware of this this and expect that some may agree, some may disagree, and some may write it out of hand. Accepting criticism, both good and bad, and then working WITH it, rather than AGAINST it, is key. Claiming that people who disagree are not constructive is a fallacy. Any comment that has a point is valid, even if all it consists of is "This suggestion will never happen, and here is why:" The point of making a suggestion thread isn't to piledrive your point across to the developers, it's to present your idea to the playerbase and get an early estimate of how good it is. If players can punch holes in it, then it's not as good as you think.

On the flip side, no one responding to a suggestion is obligated to try and IMPROVE it, or be deemed a jerk. This was absurd the first time I saw it, and it hasn't gotten less absurd now. This assumes that only people who WANT the suggestion should reply, and people who do not want the suggestion in any way, shape or form should shut up and go post somewhere else, which isn't the proper way to discuss a suggestion. Quite on the contrary, I would encourage people who HATE a suggestion to post what they hate about it, such that a suggestion can be made to both retain as much of the original idea AND do as little harm as possible to people who don't like it. "But it won't bother you much!" is a bad argument when you give the person it won't bother NOTHING back. "My fun is more important than your fun because my fun is better for the game and represents more people's preference" is what this tends to come down to, at which point people start telling each other to go to hell.

NEVER make a suggestion with the expectation that it is good or will be well-received. ALWAYS make a suggestion with the expectation that it is terrible and people are going to hate it and work to mitigate those aspects BEFORE you post, and then keep working to mitigate them thereafter. Building a suggestion just based on what you would really want without anticipating that a lot of people may not want it, and may even want not to have it, then ignoring the fact that, no, people REALLY don't like it, is a recipe for disappointment, hissy fits and acts of condemning all humanity.

Actually, if you don't have Test INSTALLED, it will ask you for a folder to install it in, rather than overwriting your existing client. In fact, it will do that even if you move your updater, and if you try to install where you're running the updater from, the installation will fail because it will try to write over the updater as its running, which the system can't do.

*edit*
If you already installed Test but deleted its client, that may be rather different.

Way more than in Spain, eh?

The reasons these things were made instances was to avoid exactly what you are proposing - other people, be they on the same side as you or enemies, from interfering with you. The game's hardline "no griefing" policy is one of the key features I like about it, because unlike all the other MMOs I've played, there is literally NOTHING anyone can do to me that I cannot shrug off. Ignore and go about your business where other people can't follow you unless you invite them specifically.

Now, and I've said this before, if you want to suggest new missions that work like this and you can come up with a convincing argument for them (and take it from me - "more alive" isn't as convincing as you believe), then I suspect people's reaction would be somewhere between approval and ambivalence. Look at all the negative comments you've gotten thus far and note what they centre on. "I don't want this!" "Don't take that away!" When you suggest a change to the status quo, you need to convince people that their status quo should change. You can't just tell them that's better for them and they should deal with it or avoid it and expect them to be sympathetic. They won't be.

As far as approval goes, I cannot disapprove of an idea to add extra new missions that take place outdoors. As long as this doesn't remove or alter anything I've been doing for the past five years (and if you do want to alter the way people play, I suggest you refrain from saying that because you WILL suffer disgruntled rants over it), then I have no ground to make complaints. You should know, however, that instances weren't introduced haphazardly. They were introduced with the specific and targeted aim to put the meat of the game's content where others cannot interfere with it or be bothered by you engaging in it. This is a rather solid reason, and while I wouldn't be opposed to adding missions that break from it, I cannot condone breaking the policy itself. I cannot agree with it.

Честно да ти кажа, ще ми се да видя български сървър колкото да се посменя, но понеже имам едно такова чувство, че съм единственият българин който играе тая игра, мисля че това ще е доста съмотно там. Не че няма да ми хареса да е самотно, де, ама що се отнася до отделен сървър... Мани, това би било голяма глупост.

That's actually one problem that is... Well, very really, very objectively a problem - that's not an instance of Perez Park. It's a custom map that's supposed to take place in some forest far away from civilization. Even the vegetation doesn't correspond to any part of Perez Park. Not all outdoor missions have a clear counterpart in the actual, real city zones, and even some that do aren't supposed to. CoV maps are, for the most part, cutouts of city zones, because CoV IS all that we see from the islands, but CoH has a whole giant city outside the war walls. That flooded Bootown map, for instance, corresponds to a location that's a quarter of a mile high in the actual Boomtown and doesn't have any water. Most of the time it's used as a destroyed alien world.

Pretty much none of the CoH outdoor instances correspond to real locations, and many are specifically described to be outside the War Walls where our zones don't cover.

Toe be fair, instanced missions of this sort have been an often requested feature. It's how I originally expected hero vs. villain PvP to work, before I found out it was just big empty zones. Granted, retrofitting that into existing missions is ANATHEMA, but actually adding such missions as a supplement for PvP zones and the Arena is actually a pretty good idea. One of the key reasons people are phobic of PvP that they state is trash-talking and griefing, which is a direct result of PvP traffic being so sparse that the griefers shine the brightest. Bringing PvP into smaller instances where it's easier to fight fights and fights generally flow better would make legitimate encounters overshadow the griefers and trash-talkers. This requires a certain critical mass of PvPers per encounter, and concentrating those encounters in smaller instances could increase their density without having to goad more people into PvP.

It's like choke points in something like the Battlefield games. On a large open map even with huge teams you can't always find big, exciting fights because everyone's scurrying along the countryside, looking for undefended flags to capture and encounters are rare, boring and one-sided. On the flip side, over a map-defined choke point, most members of both teams clash and create unbelievable action. You actually need even LESS people to have MORE action at a choke point than over wide open terrain. I believe it was a mistake to design PvP zones for a MASSIVE PvP population that clearly never existed. Such instanced PvP competitive missions could prove to be the necessary choke points, and could institute further choke points inside them.

Roll an alt, call him the same, pick different powers and start over. This is absolutely identical, at least in function, to what you're asking for. You can do this right now. You don't have to play "another" character. Hell, you could even save all of your costumes and reload them into your new character directly.

Try doing that.

You're also suggesting to move my missions outside. I don't like that. Why do you need to mess with and ruin existing content, instead of adding to it, as you say. You want to suggest adding more purely outdoor missions? Go for it. But ADD those missions, don't yank existing instances out. That way if I want to play outside, I'll go play outside, but if I want to play inside, then I won't have be annoyed at the guy who thought it was a good idea to move all missions outside. Don't be that guy.

No-one cares because these activities don't yield a good enough reward. If you have any illusions that making the game feel more "alive" and bringing the stars down from the sky will get people to leave the Architect and leave their farms, then YOU are in the minority. The idea that you can make content so engaging that it will pull people away from fat loot grind and the big rewards farms is a pipe dream. It was never anything more. Your idea, provided you don't slash and burn the rest of the game to push it forward, is interesting, but don't kid yourself that the community will certainly come together in the joy and jubilation of charitable, good clean fun. It won't happen. The only thing the community will flock to is a clear exploit.

What you're adding isn't bad for me. The more the merrier. What you are REMOVING is bad for me. I like my instances, and you can yank them out into the open over my cancelled subscription. Keep your hands away from my instances. Do not remove content I am perfectly happy with so that YOU can be happy, instead. Suggest NEW content for addition into the game and I won't so much as open my mouth. More new content is always good, outdoor, indoor or inbetween. Taking away my old content is never, ever good. Simply forget about this idea.


I don't need the game to give me in-game systems to make my actions seem like they matter, especially if it makes them matter to other people. I'm perfectly fine with a linear path of progression where everything is predetermined. Defeating Dr. Vahzilok matters as much as it gives a reason why you don't see Vazhilok anywhere past the level 15-20 range. In this game, levels represent time, so the higher your level is, the longer you have been in the city and the more things have happened TO YOU. That's perfectly fine for me, and I'm not interested in upsetting my status quo to improve on it.

Two important points to consider: Firstly, making things worse in ANY way is the wrong kind of incentive, and IS, in fact, forcing people into actions they may not enjoy by means of penalties if they don't. BAD IDEA! Design your events such that they give good benefits if heroes/villains take part and succeed, and with NOTHING if they don't participate or fail. This way no-one is forced into anything by consequences, but there is still POSITIVE INCENTIVE to taking part in them. At worst, nothing happens, but the potential to benefit is there.

Secondly, people don't do them not because there isn't any point, but because they don't give experience, drops or merits. Again, if you have any illusions that people at large are going to do them because they are fun, you are wrong. Mind you, I don't think that's a GOOD thing, but that's the reality of MMOs in general. You can make these events fun and enjoyable and, hey, even I might drop by for a spin (I stop Steel Canyon fires as often as I can get to them in time), but please don't use that as an excuse to nuke the existing instances from orbit. You hold these "alive" and "consequences" things like they are the holy grail of gaming and I care precisely zero for them, and am in fact glad we don't have more, so please understand why I don't appreciate such suggestions. I'm certainly not against adding more content WITHOUT messing up old content, but you can't use "If you build it, they will come" as justification for rewriting the rule book. They will not come.

It's personal for me because I like the game AS IS and don't fancy changing existing mechanics I am perfectly happy with for the benefit of someone else. Call me egoistical, but I cannot and will not support changes that decrease my enjoyment of the game so that someone else I don't agree with can enjoy it more. The reason I keep saying "I" and "my" is exactly this - I will not argue against changes for the benefit of other people, as long as they aren't to my detriment.

As far as experience goes, it matters. Rather a lot. Levelling up, at the bottom of it all, is the point of the game. Not a mad dash to level 50 so you can engage in the end game that doesn't exist, but levels form a timeline that tells the story of the journey. We all start as crappy, weak supers in a world full of danger and progress through the levels, gaining power, strength and confidence, eventually reaching a level where we can take on most anything and not fear imminent defeat. It is levels that mark this passage, and it is experience that makes levels go by.

As for why I would oppose stiffer fights in Atlas Park, it's because this RUINS the whole point of progress to begin with. The fact that level 1 Hellions are completely powerless against a level 50 hero is something I LIKE. It shows me that once upon a time, these guys were tough, but now I could fall asleep in the middle of them and they still wouldn't be able to hurt me. THAT is progress, and that is something I like and want to preserve. It's personal for me because you would have that taken away from me. I don't WANT "stiffer fights." I'm perfectly happy with easy, one-sided fights, thank you very much.

Oh, I see now. Your original quote said:

Put all instanced OUTDOOR missions, not all instanced missions outdoors. OK, that's not nearly as bad or disruptive as what I originally read it as. I'm still not a fan of it, however. As I said before, I like my instances, indoor and outdoor, and I don't appreciate them being taken away from me. Why is it such a problem for you to suggest NEW missions being made in the public zones instead of recycling old missions that I PREFER doing in outdoor instances? Everybody wins!

I've been to two Hamidon raids and a bunch of Rikti shuttle raids. Without a fail, these experiences have been abysmal and repugnant. The raids themselves are stupid, boring, laggy and unentertaining, and people become hideously annoying in large groups. The one successful Hamidon raid I was on, I had to turn off broadcast because a bunch of idiots were bickering and throwing around "UR MOM!" jokes like they were going out of style. You like public events, but please don't sell them as best thing since sliced bread.

As far as no-one forcing me, if you can manage to AVOID recycling existing content, destroying it in the process, yes, I can agree there's nothing that should bother me. There's a reason I avoid Rikti and Hamidon raids like the plague. Again - if you're looking for improvements of the idea, drop the notion of taking existing content away from people who like it and suggest BRAND NEW content.

Oh, and that surprises you? So everyone should always strive for still more and still more change and never be satisfied with what he already has? I was happy with this game from day one. I didn't join it and thing "Hmm... Now if only this game had loot and an economy and PvP!" I like the game as it is. I do want more stuff, obviously, but what you're offering isn't "more stuff." It's tantamount to LESS STUFF, because you're taking away content I was happy with. Improving the game should be done by adding to it, not by punching holes in it and hoping you can plug them up. Suggest NEW ADDITIONS, not the removal or repurposing of old content. You may or may not have a point in repurposing content no-one ever uses, like Hazard Zones (we've seen at least one "reclaimed"), but instanced maps are NOT such content.

Why is it so hard to understand that I don't want anything already in the to be removed or changed fundamentally, and that you should suggest NEW stuff, rather than remade OLD stuff?

The kind who designs buildings with doors that close, which people perceive as flat walls. Don't get me started on office buildings and how people constantly pretend all those closed doors don't exist and any wall with a closed door on it is the same as a solid wall.

As for your suggestion, I apparently misread your second point, as pointed out above. I read that as changing all instanced missions into outdoor world missions. Clearly, that was my fault for misreading, though I can't say your general tone didn't support my mistaken view of what you were suggesting. Even talking about JUST outdoor instances, though, I disagree. I like that outdoor instances are instanced, and many of them take place in locations that don't actually exist anywhere in the city. That's their point - to make the city seem a little bit bigger by having the game pretend you're taking the train to a neighbourhood you wouldn't find in the open-world zones. I like this design.

If you want public zone missions as described IN ADDITION to those, then go for it. But don't ask for these missions INSTEAD of the existing ones.

To avoid repeating "I misread you," read up. As for defeat-all missions, I treat every mission as if it were a defeat all. The fun is in the fight, and it makes no sense to leave an instance so I could spend more time travelling, when I could spend a bit more time killing stuff.

First, your anecdotal evidence differs from my anecdotal evidence. I can only speak for Pinnacle and Victory, but I meet other heroes, and indeed other villains, just running around the zones, travelling, killing things, or just looking for something to do. It's not COMMON, but it actually makes things a little bit cooler, because it reduces the feeling that I'm some stupid grunt in a city with 50 000 heroes. Occasionally meeting another hero fighting crime is cool. Tripping over heroes in the search for crime to fight... Not so much.

And you still haven't managed to convince me why having this in public zones and not instanced is a good idea. You're starting to contradict your own arguments. On the one hand, you're doing this to make such missions more public and make the zones more alive, as it were, yet at the same time you claim the zones are so empty that no-one will ever see these things. You can't have it both ways. In fact, it's exactly because you can't have it both ways why I still insist that while this isn't a bad idea, making it instanced is still superior. That way people don't have to travel to the butt end of IP and hope they spot a fight that may be over in the bloody ages it takes to get there. They can just respond to this like an Arena invitation and join the fight right away, possibly even right out of an instance.

By far the biggest mistake of PvP was spreading it over huge outdoor zones where actually fun encounters require a blatantly unsustainable PvP population. You're doing the same thing. Having these fights in easily-accessible instances that corral the participants together so that the density of players reaches the needed critical mass before it becomes more fun and less griefing is essential. Your agenda to make these things public for no good reason is working AGAINST them. Hell, if I heard that villains were attacking a bank and I could "join the server" and help fight them off, I probably would. Or I may not, if I don't feel like it. If I just run by them... Eh, I'd probably keep on running. You're never going to get anything meaningful like that in outside zones.

Now, if you want to, say, clone Safeguards to double up in the real outdoor zones, then SURE! As long as it's not at the cost of REMOVING existing Safeguards, then I have nothing against it. If you want to introduce real CoV players into CoH zones, however, I'm going to insist on an instanced match that was visible simply accessible to the public.

I don't LIKE your suggestion, so I have no reason to look for ways to improve it. I am only interested in finding ways to make it impact me less. As long as you don't step on my toes, I'm not going to complain about anything you do. It's pretty simple, really. I have nothing against you and I have nothing against what you want, as long as you can present this in such a way that it doesn't take away from MY gameplay. This means no changes to old content, not such fundamental ones, anyway, but adding NEW things. What really keeps me coming back to argue some more is this simple fact - I don't want old content written over to make your new content. Not gonna' happen. If you want to suggest new content, then suggest new content. Don't try to overwrite old content, no matter how minor you may think it is.

I don't want the game frozen in time any more than you do, though I despise the very concept of Inventions and all the "loot" they brought with them. I can do without loot without batting an eye. I just want the game to be IMPROVED, not CHANGED. There are plenty of things that can be added to the game WITHOUT gutting the system and turning it into something I don't like in the slightest. More stuff. More missions, more maps, more powers, more enemies, more stories, more content. If you want changes, then present them as OLD content, not as fixes for what ain't broke. Don't try to destroy the levelling system that is half the point of this game, don't try to yank four-year-old instances out into the open. Suggest NEW stuff to be ADDED, not OLD stuff to be REMADE.

You don't want me to complain? Then stop messing with my side of the game. Suggest new additions to the game and I will have no ground, or indeed any reason, to complain. Don't try to change the way I play and then tell me I can just ignore it. Add NEW content that needs to be played differently, and then you can tell me that I'm not losing anything, and you'll be right. Why is that so hard to grasp? Why is it that everyone who sets out to "fix" the game always seems to start by taking it apart? The game is FINE. Add to it, don't try to remake what's already been made.

I'm talking about the fact that I have to manually save the text to my clipboard. Easy decision when I'm done typing it, but not quite as easy when I don't expect an interruption. I can't very well highlight and save the text after every sentence I type, yet I COULD spontaneously lose my text after every sentence I type from one mis-click or one brainfart. Before, it was right there waiting for me when I got back. Now... Not so much.

Posts don't just get lose after you're done typing them and are ready to post them. Posts can get lose mid-sentence from a variety of causes. A means of automatically retaining what I wrote without me having to manually save is one thing I miss from the old boards very, very much.


I'm not sure if you can't just install the programme somewhere and then just copy the software over. An old colleague of mine used to do that to bypass the no-install security on university his laptop.

I cannot guarantee that that is legal on your job, however

Interesting. City of Heroes comes in single-player form? Where can I sign up?

In other news: your argument is trite and uninteresting. I've said this before, and someone even put it in his sig at one point: Just because I CAN play with other people doesn't mean I HAVE to play with other people. That M you are talking about is preceded by another M, and together they form the term "massively multiplayer," which describes a specific game design principle - a persistent world where all players play together on a common server, rather than off on private servers hosted by the players, themselves. This means that there are other people on the server, but does not in any way mean I have to actually interact with them.

And, if you would be so kind to get your facts straight, City of Heroes actually goes the extra mile to ensure that if I don't WANT to, I don't HAVE to. I can solo everything in this game, short of the few bits of insignificant quantity that require a minimal team size to start, and even those people have soloed. Every bit of content scales with team size. That is, it scales up with more people, but it also scales DOWN with fewer or no other people on the team. In fact, if I am by myself, even AVs will scale down to a class that I can defeat by myself.

You are also ignoring the fact that there are other means of interaction besides killstealing and PvP. Even other means of interaction aside from teaming. I am member of several Global channels and have a list of global friends. Almost every time I am on, I can interact with people via those, even if those people's characters are not in my direct presence. In fact, being solo, I can interact with people BETTER because I can always stop and chat without having impatient team-mates waiting on me.

What's more, my demand is about not HAVING to interact with other people, not out and out never meeting anyone else. I team. I do TF. I even do PuGs from time to time. When I feel like it, IF I feel like it. I might even be inclined to do some PvP when the fancy strikes. But when I do NOT feel like teaming or PvPing or dealing with random ******** who think harassing me is super fun, then I DON'T HAVE TO. And if you want to tell me I should either have to or go play a single-player game, then you can go to hell.

I'm only anti-social with pretentious bigmouths who presume to tell me how to play my game and insist that this is an MMO and I should suffer every damn fool who wishes to interfere with my gameplay. I don't take well to being dictated to by some random guy on the Internet whose only power over me is his ownership of a keyboard, and so I might come off as more than a little bit of a jerk. I'm actually a very nice, understanding, considerate person when I'm in the mood for being sociable. In these times, I seek out teams, do cooperative, sometimes even competitive content, chat with people and so on and so forth. When I do NOT feel like it, then I go off to be by myself, and that's the way I like it.

Let me say that one more time:

Just because I CAN play with other people doesn't mean I HAVE to.

I'm not interested in other people having raid-like adventures on my side and killing me in the process. How's that?

Definitely agreed on making stickied threads more visible. The current notation sucks. Not only that, but I can emulate it by putting Sticky: Thread Title in the thread title.

As well, the highlighting of threads with new responses SUCKS. They're ever so subtly bolded, and spotting them is harder than it has to be. On the old forums, a thread with new replies in it had its entire table row highlighted a different colour, making it OBVIOUS and thus much easier to spot. Please emulate that functionality here.

As long as there is a character to SK to, I am fine with it. This both preserves the requirement of a legitimately high-level character and preserves the meaning of levels. Heck, a multi-SK system is something I've always wanted to see. The bane of my teaming experience has always been the times when me and two of my friends are on, and each of us wants to play a different level character, say a 10, a 20 and a 30. There's no way in HELL that's going to work because one person always gets left out. Now if the 30 could SK both the 10 and the 20, the team would work. Instant success.

Again, this and the original suggestion may be similar in final result, but I do not agree with how the original suggestion achieves it. "No more levels" is not something I can stand behind.

The argument for it being the fastest may not have been made, but the argument that "it's so great it deserves its high cost" most certainly was. After all, it offers travel in completes safety and is, in fact, fail-safe. It allows you to keep out of range of melee enemies indefinitely. It gives you full 3D free range movement. The list goes on and on. And people were adamant that that deserved its ridiculous cost. Lo and behold, the developers disagreed, as they both upped its flight speed and slashed its cost by around half.

The arguments may be worded differently about Teleport, but the fact remains - its cost isn't balancing for any perceived advantages the power has. It's an artefact of an old age that no-one bothered to even look into.

Yeah, Brutes are so hard to control...

That only works if the post goes after I'm done posting it, though. And believe me, I do that. But I already lost a few posts by accidentally squeezing the Back button on my mouse (accursed extra mouse buttons!) and I've lost more than a few posts by opening a new tab to, say, look at a dictionary, and then opening the dictionary in the same tab as I'm posting anyway, because I forgot to switch to the new tab. In those cases, I'm not anticipating I might lose my post, so I don't think to save it.

I'm not sure I'm a fan of that. They may be faster to load, but the dotted green background of your sig pic REALLY hurts my eyes. I'm not saying that to be mean, it really does. I'm a fan of either solid colours or colour gradients. The nasty pixelization that happens when you downgrade a picture's colours is very unplesant to look at. If anything, I'd be a bigger fan of using a low-quality jpg. That, at least, is smooth.

MS Paint has really crappy encoding and produces pictures of abominable quality. Trust me, I used to use it a lot If you want a better programme to save pics in, I'd suggest using IrfanView. It's cheap, light and unobtrusive, and it gives you great tools for both viewing pictures and doing some slight editing on them. Specifically, you can save things to different qualities of jpg, and I've found that you can get very decent quality for very low memory usage.